3. For there have risen many who have given
to the plain words of Holy Writ some arbitrary interpretation of their
own, instead of its true and only sense, and this in defiance of the
clear meaning of words. Heresy lies in the sense assigned, not in
the word written; the guilt is that of the expositor, not of the
text. Is not truth indestructible? When we hear the name
Father, is not sonship involved in that Name? The Holy
Ghost is mentioned by name; must He not exist? We can no more
separate fatherhood from the Father or sonship from the Son than we can
deny the existence in the Holy Ghost of that gift which we
receive. Yet men of distorted mind plunge the whole matter in
doubt and difficulty, fatuously reversing the clear meaning of words,
and depriving the Father of His fatherhood because they wish to strip
the Son of His sonship. They take away the fatherhood by
asserting that the Son is not a Son by nature; for a son is not of the
nature of his father when begetter and begotten have not the same
properties, and he is no son whose being is different from that of the
father, and unlike it. Yet in what sense is God a Father (as He
is), if He have not begotten in His Son that same substance and nature
which are His own?